What is the origin of the phrase “in like Flynn”? I have heard it alludes to the sexual exploits of the actor Errol Flynn but have a difficult time believing a reference so graphic could have become a common catchphrase. Maybe your mom would. Mine would sooner die. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The earliest known use of “in like Flynn” in print is in the December 1946 issue of American Speech....
Where the bird lovers live. Many of the calls to the Audubon Hotline are about wounded birds, but there are few sources of help for them in Chicago, according to the Chicago Audubon Society’s Compass (April). There’s the Forest Preserve District’s Trailside Nature Center and Sand Ridge Nature Center in Calumet City. And Doris Johanson, who answers the hot line, “also has a list of individuals trained to care for wounded birds, but they mostly live in the northwest suburbs....
Alchymia Theatre, at Saint Ignatius Auditorium. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There’s little factual data on the 15th-century martyr Christian Rosenkreutz, whose life inspired the Rosicrucians, an esoteric organization initially distinguished by its promotion of alchemy, though nowadays it’s more concerned with spiritual fulfillment through metaphysical exercises. Soon after the group was launched, in 1604, one Johann Valentin Andreae wrote a pamphlet, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, that spread this quasi-religious philosophy throughout the Western world....
Dear Reader: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This is not so much a question as it is a statement about the Annoyance since the Soloways left. With the exception of a FEW actors, the Soloways took all of Mick’s top performers. This is evident with the constant resurgence of shows like Tippi Portrait of a Virgin and Manson the Musical. Two shows directed by two of the people that Napier was so embarrassed to see on TV waiting for laughs....
WOODY HERMAN 50TH REUNION BAND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fifty-one years ago, the adventurous swing bandleader Woody Herman made a left turn, assembling an orchestra to replace his “Band That Played the Blues”; the new one, which came to be known as the First Herd and lasted two seasons, played a major role in channeling the then-young idiom of bebop into the jazz mainstream....
Copyrights–and All That Jazz Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He called up the book’s publisher, which said that it had a contract with Matrix Software, out of Big Rapids, Michigan. Lange thereupon talked to Matrix president Michael Erlewine, head of a self-described bunch of “hippies and data freaks” who design data-base software, some of it for companies in the music biz. At an Internet site (it’s currently down, but will be back up as a World Wide Web page called allmusic....
I Rocked With a Zombie Roky Erickson’s usually cited claim to fame is the edgy psychedelic classic “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” recorded back in 1965 with the 13th Floor Elevators of Austin, Texas. Erickson and the Elevators’ drug theorist, Tommy Hall, sparked the band’s trippy fury with an odyssey of chemical experimentation notable even by the standards of the time; two classic albums, The Psychedelic Sounds of… and Easter Everywhere, were the result....
Liz Phair’s new album, Whip-Smart, due out sometime in September, is an awesome pop consolidation for the Wicker Park songwriter. The paradigm for today’s brash, acclaimed genius of the year is to go out hunting for new territory to invade when all is not yet firmed up on the home front. People like Terence Trent D’Arby and Sinead O’Connor, for instance, record one well-received album and then descend into a morass of charity shows, unsuccessful reaches, and lots of artistic angst before burping up a concept record after three or four years....
Never Come Morning–the Movie Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Originally adapted for Famous Door Theatre Company, the play was gathering dust until Vehill read it and, according to Peditto, realized it had possibilities. Vehill subsequently gave it to director Jennifer Markowitz, whose talents had helped make Famous Door’s Hellcab a long-running off-Loop hit. After she agreed to direct it for Prop, sources say she and Peditto clashed over how to stage the work....
Lead Stories Cultural Diversity Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In September the Economist excerpted an interview with the chairman of Chechnya’s Islamic supreme court that originally ran in a Russian magazine. Interviewer: “[Chechnya’s president] has said that touching a woman is, for Chechens, the worst crime of all. Even when doing traditional dancing, the Chechen male must not touch his female partner. But under sharia [Muslim] law, [as punishment] you beat young girls and cut their hair off....
Plan 9 From Outer Space Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though I loved this theatrical version of Ed Wood’s gloriously bad film when it first opened last March at National Pastime, I wasn’t sure the high-spirited, mildly campy comedy would be as good at another space. I needn’t have worried. After a two-month hiatus, Kelly Anchors and Mike McKune’s ensemble are tighter, stronger, and funnier on Famous Door’s stage than they were opening night on National Pastime’s eccentric, split-level space....
1994 may now seem like a firework that only fizzled, but 1995 is ready to explode. Such possibilities! The tabloids are now churning out their standard predictions for the coming year. But for those not interested in the usual parade of movie stars and talk show hosts, we offer these local predictions–a glimpse ahead to the events that will reinstate Chicago as the great Roman candle of American politics. What do you see for Mayor Richard Daley?...
Court Theatre. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Twenty-five years after its premiere, Anthony Shaffer’s homage to (and critique of) the genteel British whodunits of the 1930s still has the ability to snare viewers unfamiliar with its intricate games of deception and disguise. And even for those who know its secrets, this crafty mix of thriller and comedy of manners remains a sturdy vehicle for actors suited to its bitingly epigrammatic style....
Small Dance Showcase Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Solari, who helped build the annual Spring Festival of Dance into a major dance event, views his new festival as a giant marketing campaign for dance in Chicago: “We want to raise the visibility of dance and try things that were really not feasible downtown at the spring festival venues.” He expects to bring in companies that have rarely played a 925-seat proscenium theater like the Athenaeum, and since overhead at the nonunion Athenaeum is significantly lower than at unionized downtown venues such as the Civic Opera House and the Shubert, where many of the spring festival events were held in past years, he estimates that the festival will only need to fill about 250 seats per performance to break even....
“The most significant environmental challenge today is not to build ‘consciousness,’” reports the Center for Neighborhood Technology on West North, in an Earth Day report by associate director Stephen Perkins. Over two-thirds of metro-area consumers say they would use reusable grocery bags, water-conserving shower heads, energy-conserving thermostats, and energy-efficient light bulbs. But in the case of the last three items, most of those who say they would don’t. Blacks, Latinos, and those earning under $20,000 a year are least likely to follow through on their good intentions....
To promote the first volume of his two-part biography of Orson Welles–a fascinating if contestable book–actor-director Simon Callow is presenting a Welles tribute consisting of two half-hour shorts. Hilton Edwards’s 1951 Irish ghost story Return to Glennascaul (narrated by Welles), who also appears briefly and probably directed the short bit that allegedly shows him filming Othello, won an Oscar when it came out. But the real gem in this program is The Fountain of Youth, Welles’s first and best TV pilot–shot for Desilu in 1956 and first aired two years later....
That The Making of …”And God Spoke” can’t match the sting of its soul mate in satire, This Is Spinal Tap, is more a comment on the movies’ respective targets than on the skills of their creators. The core of Spinal Tap’s devastating look at the indignities suffered by a heavy metal band is the clueless romanticism of its subjects. The Making of …, by contrast, tells the story of a pair of hapless B-movie hacks who get their big break–studio funding for a biblical epic–and proceed to screw it up royally....
SubUrbia at Cafe Voltaire Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ten years ago, before Generation Xers became the flavor of the month, SurUrbia would have made quite a splash with its brutal portrayal of privileged youth hopelessly drifting and cynically devouring their own kind. Its New York premiere last year certainly sent critics into superlative-induced comas. But the play covers territory already well traveled by everyone from Richard Linklater to Douglas Coupland to People magazine....
WINDY CITY Despite popular myth, we’re not called the “Windy City” for our weather. New York speculators gave us the name around 1893: marveling at the boasts of Chicago developers about the “metropolis of the west,” they said that midwestern pitchmen could literally talk up a storm. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though the plot seems too fast and furious for a musical, Windy City not only makes room for songs but makes them welcome....
Writer Blocked Wexler’s article, which he then sent us, comes down hard on the Chicago Tribune, but I’m not as certain as he is that AJR let the Tribune drive it off the story. AJR was wavering already; his long, partisan discourse was better suited to a paper like the Reader than AJR. “When the redone piece came in it was certainly better,” says editor Rem Rieder, who calls the first draft “more of a tract than an analysis....
